Ayo Akingbade: Show Me the World Mister; Billie Zangewa: A Quiet Fire – review

‘Entices mind and eye’: Sweetest Devotion, 2021, left, and Temporary Reprieve, 2017, both by Billie Zangewa. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London Photograph: Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London.

Of all the art museums that run along the south coast of England, from the Box in Plymouth to the Towner in Eastbourne, Bexhill-on-Sea’s De La Warr Pavilion and Turner Contemporary in Margate, only two are attached to universities. Both are comparatively young. One is the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Brighton, of which horrifying news in a moment. The other is John Hansard Gallery in Southampton.

Once housed on the campus, and since 2018 in a building across a gleaming central square from Southampton City Art Gallery, JHG has already presented a terrific roster of names: Gerhard Richter, Derek Jarman, Lindsay Seers, Turner prize winner Helen Cammock. It is now offering the renowned Malawi-born artist Billie Zangewa, who hand-stitches her collages out of silk, and a striking two-film exhibition set in Nigeria by the London-based Ayo Akingbade, who is not yet 30.